Bring a spear, if you have to.

Tag Archives: perspective

Milan’s cobblestone streets are flooded with Italian women wrapped tightly in fur coats and men in designer jeans and studded belts. Nodding heads on subway cars look more like Ralph Lauren billboards than tired passengers heading home from a day of work. This city has a pulse and it beats rapidly, deeply through the night and early into the morning. Where I can pass as a local in some places, Italy knows better. My pale skin, pale hair and blue eyes cause long stares and incoherent words under soft breath. Men whistle as they pass by, staring too long with eager lust in their eyes. But even the greatest offense sounds beautiful when it is muttered in Italian.

This language shakes and breathes and dives in and out and up and down. Every word sounds like a call to action, a battle cry, a plea to join a cause. And the people lift their arms high, and put their hands close to your face and speak with a passion I’ve not experienced in my most heated moments. Hymns sung to Beethoven’s Fifth in an intense and frightening way to an ear that knows no better. The metro hums with chatter and booming laughter and a sense of famiglia encapsulates the city and all of the people inside it.

Duomo di Milano

We visit the Duomo, a beautiful, skyscraping cathedral, if there ever was such a thing. Never have I seen so much art in one place. Every inch is ornate and ironic in the most beautiful way: the walls, covered in sculptures up to the ceilings, which you can barely see with human eyes; stained glass windows stretch beyond my grip of sight; the floor, a maze of complicated patterns and colors; paintings hang, two-up all the way down the church on either side. We try to make sense of everything our body is trying to absorb, but we fail and become overwhelmed, groggy from the dim lights and evaporating holy water. We leave the church, letting ourselves get lost, wandering narrow streets; every turn a new discovery, a new way to get lost again and again. We are asked for change, harassed by people on the streets collecting money for ‘Africa’ or to feed their hungry babies. We push past, pretending not to understand, and stop at a tobacco shop to enjoy a freshly rolled cigarette on a cold patio, surrounded by like-minded locals.

And on a Thursday night, we walk into a small bar, where we are greeted by a group of men, laughing and eating cichete and drinking the local birra. Ciao! Ciao! Ciao!! echoes around us in a room with walls covered in old newspapers, slot machines lining the back perimeter. We swiftly and quietly order “due birre” from the bar and take our place at a small table in the corner. We quickly learn that’s not how Italians make friends. We are stoned to death with questions, and brought endless plates of formaggio and freshly sliced prosciutto, deviled eggs, cheeses, salami, bread and chips and dips. Every time we finish one plate, another one comes to replace it. Arthur works on a computer in the corner, ridden with unnecessary programs and a long history of user error. He tries to navigate Windows in Italian, and the men joke, calling him Bill Gates, gesturing to his over-sized head. They string together sentences in Italian and broken English, furrowing their brows when we don’t understand, then burning paper and building charades with toothpicks to help us along. They laugh because we don’t understand much; Armando, who knows the most English translates what he cans, and makes inappropriate gestures to either party in between his translations. The men tease each other with gay jokes and pepper their sentences with ‘fuck’ as often as possible. They apologize because I’m a girl, and immediately joke that they will take me home with them; their wives will forgive them tomorrow, they say.

Then a free round of beers come before the bar closes, but we stay inside, laughing and eating, filling the room with the sweet, choking smell of competing tobaccos. The owner pulls out his camera, points to his wall of photos, and we spend the next 15 minutes posing for pictures we’ll never see. We part ways, but not before receiving an invitation for the next night, which we know we will accept. And we will come back the next night, but it won’t be quite the same. These fleeting moments are never able to be repeated, and so we cherish them even more.

Tonight, we went to the Brass Ass. If you’re from the area, you know what a wretched place it is, if not, you can use your imagination. We went as a “ha ha lets go to the Brass Ass and get cray!” sort of gesture that made sense when vodka cranberries were swirling around in our bellies, making our blood hot.

My experience with strippers so far in life has been pretty high-brow. Vegas, Bourbon Street and a few private parties. These ladies were of a different sort. It was a scene straight out of a Palahniuk novel. We all joked that we could do better, and how we didn’t feel so bad about our bodies. We laughed loudly, clapping our hands and avoiding the cat calls aimed in our direction. And then we left, I drove home and now sitting here, the tragedy of it all is sinking in. Because this was an hour to laugh about in my Saturday night, but for those women, this is their jobs, their lives. This is what they do every day.

So I’m not sure exactly what I’m thankful for tonight. Can I say I’m thankful I’m not a stripper without sounding completely pretentious? Yeah, I didn’t think so.

I guess I’m just thankful that I see enough potential in myself to never lose sight of who I am. No matter how bad I may screw something up, I know I’ll always bounce back. Maybe those women were bouncing back too, or maybe they are more capable of removing the stigmas society tells us to have towards strippers. Maybe they love their lives.

Like this:

A couple days a month I spend an hour or two at an elementary school in a low-income area, reading to a child.

I’ve been quite a few times now, which has been a very liberating experience for me. I know very little about kids, and feel somewhat awkward in dealing with them. I decided a long time ago I didn’t want any myself.

But, just as a child conquers the monsters in their closet, I shall conquer mine. The more time I spend with kids, the more I seem to like them, and the more I realize I don’t have to know all of the rules- they certainly don’t. And they aren’t corrupted enough quite yet to tell me my way is wrong.

So anyway, today I was reading to a little girl who wanted nothing to do with it. She said she hated reading and she wanted to go to class and didn’t want to be anywhere near me. Eventually, she told the teacher she was done reading and I watched her run as quickly as possible in the opposite direction from where I was standing. I was a cocktail of confused, annoyed and embarrassed. I should be able to hold a 7 year old’s attention for 20 minutes, after all. I loved reading at that age- I used to compete with my brother to see who could read the most over the course of the summer.

But, once the teacher came over and talked to me, explaining that most of these children come from a single parent family where they receive little, if any, one on one time, I saw things differently.

I grew up in a house with both parents, where school was the top priority, where being smart was more important than being pretty. I had chores, I was grounded nearly every other weekend, I did a lot of stupid things, but I always had the security of a stable family, surrounded by people who would quite literally do anything for me.

I’m not sure what the little girl’s circumstances are that I met today- she may come from a family just like my own and was just having an off day.

Even still, today was a very good reminder of how much work my parents put into raising me. I was a lot of work a lot of the time. I’m grateful beyond words for the time they invested in me.

Today, I’m thankful that I got to spend the day with my family, doing absolutely nothing.

I’m not exactly a patriotic person, and I’m a pacifist at heart. Since it is the Fourth of July, I was feeling obligated to be thankful for something American-like, even though I have honestly grown tired of so much about this country. It’s hard to feel proud to be an American when I look at what that means in context. Greed, glutton, ignorance, deception… how could I when that’s how I see things? This tweet gave me the perspective I needed, though:

I don’t have to be hokey to be thankful that I am able to spend a holiday with the people I love. To sleep in a comfortable bed, and to not worry about much of anything. I don’t like war – I think it’s rotten, and I don’t necessarily think it has much to do with our freedom anymore. But I get that someone has to do it for us to make it in this difficult world. I’m thankful that they are doing it. That people are putting their lives on the line so that people like me don’t have to. I would be terrible at war. I would die. I mean literally, I would be killed. No time flat.

So, with all genuineness, I’m thankful that I get to enjoy being home, doing nothing today. I’m thankful for the people whom I don’t even know, yet depend so much upon, to make that my reality.

I walked into my office this morning to an Applebee’s gift card from someone who submitted a classified ad to my newsletter. Well, didn’t just submit it – he emailed and called quite a few times over the course of the last month, making sure it was published, making sure I got his voicemails, making sure I got his emails. I’ll admit I got annoyed with him a few times and wasn’t as completely nice as I could have been.

So the gift card was a good reminder that you should always take the extra second or 10 seconds, or minute, or 5 minutes to be kind. I was never rude; I simply could have taken a little breath, gained a little perspective, and been a little better than I was. I’m not saying money buys me love – the note he wrote without the gift card would have had the same effect on my heart.

I encountered someone yesterday who had the same effect on me. I was getting my car assessed from a recent rear-end accident. My bumper was barely scuffed. The agent said he would work in extra time to have my entire bumper sanded and painted, to repair another, much more noticeable scratch I got in a Kroger parking lot a few weeks after getting my car. And he was just so nice. An insurance agent, of all people.

So two little acts of kindness have restored a lot of faith in me today. Little reminders that it takes no more time to be kind than it does to be obnoxious – and it’s better for your blood pressure too, I think.

That overused cliché about never forgetting how to ride a bike turns out to be true. I haven’t had a bike since… well, I honestly don’t even remember. Sometime around second grade, I think.

We got my dad a bicycle for Father’s Day a few weeks ago, and since the temperature dropped from 93 to 75 degrees over the course of an hour today, I finally decided to give it a whirl around the block. I’ve been debating for weeks, but I’ve psyched myself out every time, imagining violently sliding across the pavement sideways and meeting my untimely and embarrassing end. Today, I said screw it, put on some soffe shorts and a tank top, and went for it.

I went around the block twice and came back in, sweating, and feeling good that I conquered my fear – even if that makes me as accomplished as a 6 years old. After a little bit of lightning and some spitting rain passed, I decided to go back out again.

I’m so glad I did – the air had a yellow hue, the clouds were dark purple against an auburn sky, and the air was cool. I kept the gear higher than I should trudging up the massive hills in my neighborhood and didn’t succumb to squeezing the breaks as I came soaring down the other side. It felt incredible to go that fast, cool air beating around my ears and tangling my hair. And one time around the block turned into three or four or five, as I lost track of time.

I’m sure I my butt cheeks will be hurting tomorrow, the unfortunate way they do when a bicycle seat bruises them, but for now, I’m glad that I got on and started peddling. Once I did, I realized how silly it was to not ride simply for the fear of falling down.

I know a lot of people have irrational fears about the dentist, but I’m not one of them. I never had many problems with my teeth growing up, so it was always a pleasant enough experience for me.

Today, I went for my annual cleaning. The thought of someone else scraping the plaque off your teeth is pretty disgusting, but it just feel so good. They use that little round super toothbrush that buffs your teeth, and the toothpaste with the sand in it – then rinse, vacuum out your mouth, give you a free toothbrush, and send you on your way.